flowers. You've seen him, I dare say, and his magenta daisies and
yellow peonies. Well, he was rather a forlorn object, with his poor
old red nose, and bleary eyes, and white hair, standing at the windy
corners silently holding out those horrid flowers. I bought all he
had that day, and gave them to some colored children on my way home,
and told him to come to our house and get an old coat Mamma was
waiting to get rid of. He told a pitiful story of himself and his
old wife, who made the paper horrors in her bed, and how they needed
everything, but didn't wish to beg. I was much touched, and flew
home to look up the coat and some shoes, and when my old Lear came
creeping in the back way, I ordered cook to give him a warm dinner
and something nice for the old woman.

"I was called upstairs while he was mumbling his food, and blessing
me in the most lovely manner; and he went away much comforted, I
flattered myself. But an hour later, up came the cook in a great
panic to report that my venerable and pious beggar had carried off
several of Papa's shirts and pairs of socks out of the clothes-basket
in the laundry, and the nice warm hood we keep for the girl to hang
out clothes in.

"I was VERY angry, and, taking Harry with me, went at once to the
address the old rascal gave me, a dirty court out of Hanover Street
No such person had ever lived there, and my white-haired saint was a
humbug. Harry laughed at me, and Mamma forbade me to bring any more
thieves to the house, and the girls scolded awfully.

"Well, I recovered from the shock, and, nothing daunted, went off to
the little Irishwoman who sells apples on the Common,--not the fat,
tosey one with the stall near West Street, but the dried-up one who